All of the trend lines on this site are positive except one: story submissions. After an initial surge, they have been gradually declining despite users and page views climbing. Tonight the submission queue ran dry. Janrinok and I could go scrounging, as we sometimes do, but this needs to be addressed.
We have around four thousand registered users, and who knows how may AC's reading along. We can do better.
I challenge each of you to submit stories on a regular basis, at whatever frequency you find comfortable. Really, if even half of us submitted a story once a week, we would have more than we could ever use. Once a day, once a week, once a month, whatever you can handle, send it in.
Bookmark this link: http://dev.soylentnews.org/submit.pl - use it. Give us so many stories that we can select the cream of the crop and stun you with how amazing our community is. Make it happen.
I'm going to leave this story on top for a while, and see what is waiting for us when I get to work in the morning. Wow me, please.
This is our news site. There are others like it, but this one is ours. Its success is in your hands.
[UPDATE: We have received, in less than 12 hours, more submissions than we had the whole rest of the weekend. THANK YOU SO MUCH, and please, keep them coming. Even one story a month matters. Let the party re-commence. :) ]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Monday March 24 2014, @08:30AM
I just thought I would share the RSS/atom feeds I use to find relevant stories. I do not claim these are definitive or comprehensive. I'm just trying to start an exchange of ideas.
The trouble is, finding a story that looks superficially Soylent-worthy takes a lot less time than does writing a good summary that tamps down the hype and spin we typically see in media stories. So I see a lot of headlines that I let slide because I don't have time to do them justice, or they are overplayed topics I don't want to see here (climate change, anyone?).
So, my feeds:
There are many others I could imagine subscribing to, such as Science News [sciencenews.org], Scientific American [scientificamerican.com], or Physics Today [aip.org], but I can't spend _all_ day reading the science press. I think you get the idea.
Does anyone else have promising sources for Soylent material he/she would like to share?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight who is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Monday March 24 2014, @10:13AM
It's always my fault...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by randmcnatt on Monday March 24 2014, @11:19AM
These days much, if not most "journalism" comes from news releases, including SN stories, sometimes rewritten or addended, but just as often presented as-is.
The releases might be available as RSS, but may need to be fed to a central address (like inputs@soylentnews.com) and doled out to volunteers for vetting.
I'm not sure of the protocol for becoming a "target".
The Wright brothers were not the first to fly: they were the first to land.